Yelp Now Allows Businesses to Highlight Their Vaccine Policies. Review Bombing Follows.

Medical Justice provides consultations to doctors facing medico-legal obstacles. We have solutions for doctor-patient conflicts, unwarranted demands for refunds, online defamation (patient review mischief), meritless litigation, and a gazillion other issues. We also provide counsel specific to COVID-19. If you are navigating a medico-legal obstacle, visit our booking page to schedule a consultation – or use the tool shared below.

Review bombing of a business is defined as influx of negative online reviews from non-customers due to public attention.

This August, Yelp added two new features businesses can list on their profiles. A business can publicize that its staff is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. It can also indicate if it requires customers to provide proof of vaccination to receive services. Businesses can highlight these vaccine “badges.” Those searching on Yelp can filter their queries using these parameters.

As of August 23, 26k businesses listed at least one of these two vaccine “badges” on their profiles.

Some of these businesses have been carpet-bombed with negative reviews, often from non-customers.

The company said it would proactively monitor the pages of businesses that chose to disclose their vaccine policies, read new reviews before they are published and remove those that violate its terms of service.…So far, 45 reviews have been taken down through proactive moderation.

The company began using proactive moderation to manage the rollout of new badges last summer, when Yelp added one to identify Black-owned businesses as part of the company’s response to the killing of George Floyd. Since then, the company has pre-emptively monitored the pages of any business using its identity-based attributes. 

Yelp didn’t use the strategy when it created filters to let businesses share their masking policies earlier in the coronavirus pandemic. Roseann Rostoker, owner of Red Gravy, a restaurant in New Orleans, said she received one-star reviews on Yelp from people upset about her mask policy.

Yelp created special Covid-19 content guidelines in March 2020 and has “removed more than 13,000 reviews for violating these guidelines.”

Yelp apparently monitors changes in traffic to a page. If some public controversy leads to more page views and more negative reviews, it temporarily freezes content on that page. So, no new negative reviews can be left. But no new positive reviews can be posted either.

The jury is still out whether adding these vaccine badges will be a financial net positive or negative for a business, or whether the results will vary depending on the type of business and what part of the country the business is based.

Still, one business summed up his internal accounting opinion of Yelp.

Mr. Frangiadis, executive chef and managing partner of Spork in Pittsburgh, started requiring proof of vaccination for guests at his restaurant. He has not updated his company Yelp profile to reflect that update. He opined Yelp’s proactive moderation policy is welcome, but he still doesn’t like the platform because it doesn’t limit reviews to people who have dined at Spork and it can be hard to reach people at Yelp. “We would be perfectly comfortable without having a Yelp page at all,” he said. 

He’s probably not alone.

What do you think?

Medical Justice provides consultations to doctors facing medico-legal obstacles. We have solutions for doctor-patient conflicts, unwarranted demands for refunds, online defamation (patient review mischief), meritless litigation, and a gazillion other issues. We also provide counsel specific to COVID-19. If you are navigating a medico-legal obstacle, visit our booking page to schedule a consultation.

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Jeffrey Segal, MD, JD

Chief Executive Officer and Founder

Dr. Jeffrey Segal, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Medical Justice, is a board-certified neurosurgeon. Dr. Segal is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons; the American College of Legal Medicine; and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. He is also a member of the North American Spine Society. In the process of conceiving, funding, developing, and growing Medical Justice, Dr. Segal has established himself as one of the country’s leading authorities on medical malpractice issues, counterclaims, and internet-based assaults on reputation.

Dr. Segal was a practicing neurosurgeon for approximately ten years, during which time he also played an active role as a participant on various state-sanctioned medical review panels designed to decrease the incidence of meritless medical malpractice cases.

Dr. Segal holds a M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, where he also completed a neurosurgical residency. Dr. Segal served as a Spinal Surgery Fellow at The University of South Florida Medical School. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa as well as the AOA Medical Honor Society. Dr. Segal received his B.A. from the University of Texas and graduated with a J.D. from Concord Law School with highest honors.

In 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of DarPharma, Inc, a biotechnology company in Chapel Hill, NC, focused on the discovery and development of first-of-class pharmaceuticals for neuropsychiatric disorders.

Dr. Segal is also a partner at Byrd Adatto, a national business and health care law firm. Byrd Adatto was selected as a Best Law Firm in the 2021 edition of the “Best Law Firms” list by U.S. News – Best Lawyers. With decades of combined experience in serving doctors, dentists, and other providers, Byrd Adatto has a national pedigree to address most legal issues that arise in the business and practice of medicine.